


wherever we're opened, we're red

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Self-Sacrificing Morons, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3654081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve swallows hard, or tries to; his throat’s too damned tight. </p><p>“You,” and Steve’s hands are brands, are vises against the wound where it’s spilling, where Bucky ran and leapt where Steve hadn’t even thought to <i>look</i>, where it’s Bucky’s body that’s failing, Bucky’s artery that’s leaking too fast to rightly heal, and it should’ve been Steve. </p><p>It should have been <i>Steve</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wherever we're opened, we're red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangephenomena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangephenomena/gifts).



> Written for [strangephenomena](http://archiveofourown.org/users/strangephenomena), who asked for this prompt: _Steve or Bucky (you can choose) is seriously injured. They are, for some reason, hard to reach so they have to wait for help. In the meantime, whoever is the uninjured party is keeping the dying one alive as best they can. Eventually, there is a reveal that the uninjured party has actually been hurt too and is also in desperate need of medical attention but they were hiding their pain to try and save the other._ I kinda-sorta-almost fulfilled the request, ish. 
> 
> As ever, all my thanks to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for looking this over.
> 
> Title credit to Clive Barker.

“Look at me.”

The air is thin, here; scarce, here—Steve’s lungs are burning; he can feel the beat of his heart against the collar of his uniform, harsh and unforgiving: a dark omen. A death knoll.

“Goddamnit Bucky, _look at me_!”

Those lashes finally flutter, and Steve’s pulse follows suit, the deep gash in his side soaking red into the white as Bucky’s eyes open, as his gaze stays far, stays cloudy for too many seconds, too many breaths that Steve can’t take, not when Bucky’s bleeding quicker, freer: beyond the control of the serum in his veins or the desperation of Steve’s hands, Steve’s soul.

“Heh,” Bucky slurs, the quirk of his lips a hazy thing, flickering through a grimace. “Hey, punk.”

“You’re an idiot,” Steve hisses, not for the pull of his own wound, but for the sear of what the weakening, racing pump of the blood still left in Bucky’s veins _means_. 

“You’re,” Steve swallows hard, or tries to; his throat’s too goddamned tight. “You,” and Steve’s hands are brands, are vises against the wound where it’s spilling, where Bucky ran and leapt where Steve hadn’t even thought to _look_ , where it’s Bucky’s body that’s failing, Bucky’s artery that’s leaking too fast to rightly heal, and it should’ve been Steve, it should have been _Steve_.

“Bucky,” Steve tries to hold it together as his heart wants to break, as he snarls in against it _no, no, you won’t have to, I won’t let you have to_; Steve tries to hold Bucky together as he slips crimson through his fingertips. 

“ _Buck_ ,” Steve gasps, near-whines, as he fails his heart; as he fails them both.

“S’okay,” Bucky murmurs, more the shape of lips than the sound of words. “S’okay, Stevie. “Th’serum…”

And Bucky trails off, eyelids lagging, slipping and Steve’s chest tightens before Bucky draws in a labored breath, blood hot, pulse grower softer against Steve’s hand at the hole in him; before Bucky’s eyes blinks slow and find Steve’s again.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Steve bites out against the swell of agony that wants to choke him, that wants to eat him alive as he drives down all the voices of reason, all the inevitable outcomes that come to his mind, because he won’t lose Bucky, he won’t lose Bucky in this godforsaken pit, they won’t take him, not again, not like this. “What in god’s _name_ —”

“Couldn’t,” Bucky gasps, shakes his head, or tries to—the motion’s more a loll, the breath more of a whimper. “Couldn’t letya,” and he lifts an arm, uncoordinated, flailing from the elbow until it finds Steve’s own, until Steve’s hand finds him. 

“Steve,” he mouths, and his eyes are clear for the briefest of moment; see through and cups Steve’s heart in its heat, in its _need_ , in how much feeling a century, a lifetime lived twice could ever know. 

“Stevie, m’never gonna let you,” and he trails off, leaves it unsaid against the faces of mountains and the beds of rivers and the hard floor beneath them, here, now, as he draws lazy half-circles against Steve’s knuckles, part in the air, losing focus and quick: “Love ya too much.”

And Steve wants to rail against it, wants to scream to the sky, to whatever god’s gonna listen—Steve wants to break under the force of loving _back_ , of how Bucky can’t seem to understand that however much he loves Steve, Steve loves him tenfold, at least, and he cannot, he _will not_ watch Bucky go, not ever.

He won’t survive it again.

“S’okay,” Bucky sighs out, eyes sliding closed, and Steve won’t admit to the slowing of the blood beneath his hands, for all the wrong reasons. “S’all okay.”

And it isn’t, it can’t be—they came in, they cleared the base, the mission was simple, and they were supposed to be home-free, and then those bastards, and they’d aimed for Steve, it’d been Steve who didn’t look, didn’t see where Bucky was watching not just his six but his two, his ten, his twelve straight ahead, his _everything_ , and Steve won’t let Hydra take Bucky again, he won’t.

“S’all gonna be okay…” Bucky exhales, and Steve’s watching the rise and fall of his chest as it stutters; doesn’t stop, but the speaking does, and Bucky’s not there, unconscious and still save for the spill of hair across cheeks without any color, across lips more grey than pink.

“Buck?” Steve asks to the ether, knowing what won’t come. “Bucky,” he shakes him at the elbow, desperate: “Bucky!”

Nothing. Nothing, and it’s only the blessing, the curse of increased sensitivity that lets him feel Bucky’s heart still pumping blood to all the wrong places, straight out the veins; lets him feel his own hands grasp at it for naught, fail to hold where they need to, and the universe doesn’t change.

The universe doesn’t fucking _change_.

“Fuck,” Steve’s lungs feel small, all of a sudden; feel less equipped to their tasks than ever before, than they had when they’d hung half-shriveled under brittle ribs, ready to give out; Steve weighs his options—more blood lost, for whatever the pressure he’s giving manages to stay; the likelihood of finding anything that might help in their surroundings: supply room, closest defensible position he could find: maybe. 

He doesn’t pray anymore; doesn’t bother, because it doesn’t do any good.

He ties his belief up in the man who took a bullet for him, who’s nearly bled out to the floor beneath their feet, and Steve runs red hand through his hair, desperate; he feels the slick press of drying blood against his face, stuck at his temples—he swallows the sob that wants to devour him instead.

He leans, and presses lips quick to Bucky’s mouth, and there’s no response, but he holds the soft brush of air, the small exhale that’s real, that’s _there_ : he holds that in his chest and he thinks, hard as he can: _please_.

_Please, don’t leave._

Steve bites back a grown that wants to be a cry when standing stretches his own wound, when the world tilts for a second before steadying: he glances down, but doesn’t dwell on the pool of his own blood: irrelevant.

The fabric of his uniform hangs heavy, soaked through to either side of the gash straight through, drips to the floor as he moves: but that’s irrelevant, too. 

Steve’s eyes scan the room, take in the minutiae of his surroundings as quick as they can: enemy or no, the white-and-red gives his target away as it always has, and he runs for the first aid and hopes against the creep of time that there will be something, anything to help, to stay the hand of what’s to come. The kit’s dated, but better stocked than he’s expecting, than the universe tends to lean his way. His eyes take stock, dart to Bucky, measure the subtle lift of his chest, and Steve knows that they’ve only got one option—reckless and foolish and dangerous, just this side of stupid, but he’ll take it, all the stupid, and he’ll carry it home as long as he doesn’t have to carry Bucky, too—so long as Bucky can breathe to walk back on his own two feet.

It’s steps, just steps between them, but Steve’s damn-near panting by the time he kneels at Bucky’s side, rips open the vacupacks and tosses gloves, prep pads, typing cards aside without thought or finesse: their blood’s a match, was before any procedures on either end, and they’re not gonna die of infection.

They’re not gonna die, _period_.

He packs the wound as best he can, with what he has. He gets the line ready, hands shaking; bites his lips hard, breathes deep: he’s watched it, he’s done it, but never to himself, and more than that, never for someone who _matters_ this _much_ —he can’t wholly rely on the recollection of his muscles, but if he focuses, remembers the instruction and the demonstration and the application in the field, if he trusts an eidetic memory and an enhanced intellect—the capacity of his body to meet the goddamn _occasion_ , then he can do this.

He can _do_ this.

Artery to vein, Steve can’t help the sigh of relief when the blood starts to flow, when he finally manages to give to Bucky half of what Bucky’s always given for him: heart and soul and blood and bone and everything, goddamned _everything_ —

“You hang on, now,” Steve reaches, feels the heady pounding of his heart with new gravity, new weight as he stares at Bucky’s face—pale, so fucking _pale_ ; as he strokes Bucky’s cheek—too cool; as he carefully moves closer, tries to will what heat is in his flesh back into Bucky’s skin, curses the spill of precious blood from down his ribs onto the ground because the ground doesn’t need it. _Bucky_ needs it.

“You hang the _fuck_ on, James Buchanan Barnes, do you hear me?” And Steve hopes so; god, but he hopes so, because all _Steve_ can hear is the drumming, is the keening of his heartbeat as he stares, as he wills heaven and earth and fate and life and death to heed him, to know that this one soul is off-limits, that this one man can’t be touched, that Bucky is _Steve’s_ , and Steve will be damned if Bucky’s lost because of him, if Bucky gives _this_ for _him_.

Not _again_.

“You can’t do this,” Steve whispers, and there’s heat trailing from the gash in his side, there’s a sting at the injection site, there’s a burning that might end him behind his eyes, streaming down his cheeks as his vision blurs, as the world fades, narrows to Bucky, always Bucky, only Bucky.

“You can’t fucking _do_ this to me,” Steve babbles, rages, murmurs, moans. “You’re always leaving, always protecting me and then, then you,” and his breathing hitches; black encroaches unbidden at the corners of his eyes.

“You can’t fucking _do_ this to me,” he breathes, and he sees red through the line, Steve bleeding into Bucky with all the truth of the body, all the give of the heart and Bucky can’t leave him. Not now. Not when Steve’s spilling the whole of him in order to anchor, in order to keep. Bucky can’t have put himself in the line of fire, Bucky can’t have taken the bullet yet again. 

“Not again,” Steve whispers. “Not ever again.”

And the world seems faint, and flooded with too much water, too much light:

“You don’t see it. You’ve never seen it,” Steve breathes, shivers: he reaches the fingers free to move to test Bucky’s pulse, but his hands don’t listen, tremble fine and faint, but too much to tell whether the beat’s much firmer, whether he’s doing any good.

“You’re the one worth saving, you jackass,” Steve huffs, flattens his palm across Bucky’s neck and wrestles with the air in his lungs. “Without you,” and Steve can’t say it without faltering, can’t think it without cracking down the seams. “Without you, I’m…” 

And he can’t see clearly, his eyes are swimming: tears and the pull of something foggy, something strong at the edges of his waking mind, beckoning him down—and he knows that feeling. He knows that it’s always been a comfort beneath understanding, below the threat of what it means to lose too dear; he comprehends it without conscious thought. He can’t tell if Bucky’s skin is finding its color, Steve can’t tell if that heart’s gaining ground—but his own is heavy, a riot at the center of his chest and he can’t feel it in his thumbs anymore; he can’t swallow around the swell of it, and it’s getting cold, the ice is closing in. And Bucky’s lashes might be stirring. Maybe.

The dark’s not an enemy, though: it’s okay if it wins.

_______________________________________

The thing about the dark, though—enemy or not—is that Steve knows it well enough to not be surprised when it gives way.

The dark wins, sometimes, but never for long.

It does cling, though; holds to Steve’s body, weighs him down, makes it difficult to move, to process his surroundings by sensation before he can even think to ease open his eyes. It’s slow, then—the way he comes to: cool, rough against his skin. Antiseptic tang on the air. Tenderness, tightness at his side. Warmth against his palm. He exhales.

Wait.

 _Bucky_.

His eyes fly open, and he hears the monitor at his side respond; feels the clench of his hand as he raises himself, sits up fast, heart in his throat and can’t breathe, can’t think before he’s fixed dead on, straight to the bed beneath him with that gaze, that stare: unforgiving tide-eyes too wide, too unmoored to not take hold.

There are a long stretch of moments where pure emotions pass across Bucky’s features, saturate his eyes in different shades—unadulterated as they flicker in sequence, fear and hope and mourning; love and relief and despair.

And rage.

“You,” Bucky draws back, and Steve misses the touch of him, the curl of fingers at his pulse; “are a bastard, Rogers.”

Steve stares, takes him in. Doesn’t have to question whether this is real, whether they’ve survived because Steve never dreams of pure novelty. Steve only ever dreams in constructs that he’s known.

And he’s never _seen_ Bucky like this; never seen his eyes go quite so wild.

“You’re—”

“ _I’m_ not the problem here,” Bucky snarls, Steve can read that intention in his face but the strain in his voice lets it crack, leaves it shivering. “ _You_ decided to hook yourself up in a half-assed field blood transfusion _while you were already bleeding out_ , you _fucker_.”

Steve’s brow furrows. He’s here, though. They’re alive. It worked; it’s fine.

“The serum—”

“The serum only works so fast, dipshit!” 

“Look who’s talking!” Steve shoots back, because Bucky’d been drifting, been fading fast, and when _he’d_ tried to argue that the serum would make it right in time, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I knew what I was doing,” Bucky scowls, eyes fever-bright with too many emotions; more than Steve figures Bucky’d want him to see. “And I did it for a good goddamn reason.”

Steve’s jaw clenches. “So did I.”

Bucky blinks, still for a moment, before leaping to his feet.

“No, what _you_ did was the same half-cocked bullshit you always do, without a thought in your fucking _head_ —”

“The _thought_ in my fucking _head_ ,” Steve cuts him off, “was that I wasn’t going to lose you!” 

The quicksilver beeping of the EKG filling in the gaps where they breathe, reaching out with a whine to tether them both in the here and now as quiet settles molten, viscous between them, tight like a noose.

“ _That_ was the only thought,” Steve exhales, damn near keens with the need for Bucky to know it, to _see_. “And that’s the only thought I’m ever going to need, do you understand me?”

Bucky’s chest is heaving, and Steve takes the opportunity to satisfy his own anxious thinking, to settle his own worries as he studies Bucky’s expression, every palm-known nuance and hitch to check for discomfort, but there’s nothing but heartache ailing him: and maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s horrible to even think, but Steve’s grateful, because Bucky’s breathing, Bucky’s healed.

Bucky’s _here_.

“I took that bullet so you’d be okay,” Bucky exhales, and Steve watches the fight tangibly escape with the breath. “And then you,” Bucky bites at his lip, and Steve knows that look, knows the shift of his jaw and the soft hollow of his cheeks; the way he clenches his eyes and his fists and swallows once, twice: too hard. “You almost...”

Bucky falls back to the chair he’d been sitting in, plastered at Steve’s side, knees tucked beneath the bed-frame to be closer, to be present; Steve opens his hand for the one that reaches out to him, and laces their fingers together by rote.

“Stark extracted us,” Bucky murmurs, doesn’t look up. “We thought it was too,” and that throat works around the feeling; the hand in Steve’s own tightens sharp. “That you were...”

Bucky inhales shaky—too deep with no payoff, sloppy and strangled and harsh in Steve’s own chest for just the sound; Bucky inhales, and lifts Steve’s hand gently, tender to the touch of his mouth, his lips: kisses there long, memorizing the feeling until he breathes, just breathes through the gaps between Steve’s knuckles, like a prayer.

“I took that bullet with eyes open, Stevie,” Bucky mouths against his fingertips; “and I know you’ve got reason to doubt me, I know that—”

“Fuck that,” Steve interjects, turning the grips of their hands and drawing Bucky’s palm, and Bucky with it, up toward him: closer, closer so that Bucky’s leaning over him, face to face, eye to eye; so that Bucky’s hand rests on his chest: full disclosure. Nothing cheated.

“Fuck that, James Barnes, and fuck you if you believe it,” Steve drags out between clenched teeth, and feels the pulse of his blood all the heavier for the way that Bucky presses deep against it, into it, needing and full. 

“You took that bullet with eyes open,” Steve says, never breaks eye contact; refuses to blink. “And I took my chances the same damned way.” 

And if Bucky’s cheeks are wet, Steve only matches him, rift for rift inside this deathless ache, this boundless love that knows no ending; if Bucky starts to shake, Steve only holds him, only meets him tremor to bone.

“I cannot, I _will not_ , say goodbye to you again,” Steve breathes out, all the conviction in the cosmos at his whim. “Do you understand me?”

Bucky’s jaw goes slack, and he’s so close; he’s so close, and Steve doesn’t have to hold Bucky’s touch to his chest; Bucky keeps it there all on his own as Steve reaches, cups Bucky’s face in his hand.

“I will walk into hell and back,” Steve vows, the only promise he’s ever felt with all of him; ever hurt to leave unmade. “I will march up to St. Peter himself, I will take the heart from chest, I will hand you my lungs and I will sure as _hell_ give you the blood in my veins down to the last drop, you asshole, because I love you, and I don’t want to be who I was when I was stuck here missing you, wanting you.” He lets the pad of his thumb trace the bow of Bucky’s lips. “ _Needing_ you like goddamned _air_.”

When Bucky kisses the whorl of Steve’s thumbprint, it is a benediction. It is fleeting, all dew before dawn, but it’s true. 

Steve finally believes in the power to breathe, once more.

“So don’t you talk to me about walking in with my eyes open,” Steve begs it; demands it. “There is nothing I won’t do for you. And if I know one thing in all the world, it’s that I’m never going to live when you aren’t,” Steve shudders, bites back more tears as he whispers low: “Not ever again.”

Bucky drops his forehead to Steve’s, and what fills Steve’s lungs on the inhale is warmth, is life, is Bucky through and through.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Bucky moans against him, wretched and faint. “I thought you were,” he chokes; “I was…”

And Steve knows. He knows.

“Then don’t ask that of me in exchange,” Steve lets his lips drag against Bucky’s skin, drops a kiss to the crest of his cheekbone. “Don’t damn me to that feeling, Buck. If you love me—”

“More than life,” Bucky says it, straight and firm and true. “More than,” he shakes his head, incredulous; his hair brushes intimate against Steve’s jaw. “More than you’ll ever know.”

And Steve both agrees and disagrees, because Steve knows it with every breath, with every heartbeat, and yet to _understand_ it—that’s a whole other beast.

“Then don’t leave me,” Steve exhales, because that’s all that’s left to say. “Don’t try to tell me a life without you’s more than no life at all. I know better.” Steve tilts Bucky’s chin up just a little more, to breathe out against his lips the heartsore truth: “I’ve lived it.”

Bucky doesn’t promise, doesn’t agree or confirm, but he kisses Steve with the kind of life that’s made for keeping; with the kind of belief in geometric truth, in lines unending, stretching toward forever. Bucky doesn’t _promise_ anything, but Steve is pretty sure he doesn’t need to.

This; _this_ , is pledge enough.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/115137368407/fic-wherever-were-opened-were-red-1-1).


End file.
